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Explore content from blog posts to technical white papers gathered together for your convenience. All written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

Are Fiducial Marker Placements on PCBs Still Necessary with Modern Manufacturing Capabilities? About 10 years ago, I stopped watching horror movies. In my younger days I really enjoyed being scared silly, but when I started my engineering career I became more interested in action and sci-fi genres. This is likely because I was getting my fair share of horror stories at work when simple mistakes resulted in catastrophic post-production nightmares. Sign up and try Altium Designer today. When I started my electronics design career, through Read Article

SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod Competition: The Pod Flight Heard Around the World Judy Warner and Benjamin Kitzinger of Altium If I had any question I am a total geek, all doubt was dispelled yesterday when I entered the gates to the Hyperloop Pod Competition II held at SpaceX headquarters in Torrance, California. I felt exactly like a giddy 8-year-old clearing the turnstile at Disneyland for the first time. Then, when the WARR Hyperloop team set the new pod world speed record, at 324 km/h (just over 200 mph), I nearly Read Article

Why You Should Use PCB Assembly Variants for Multiple Design Configurations Years ago I was working on a design that had been copied from an existing board, but there was a problem. A few of the circuits on my layout didn’t match what the engineer had in his schematic. This generated a lot of confusion. We eventually tracked the problem down to some edits that had been made to the board after the design had been approved and sent to fabrication. An inadvertent change to the board while creating an assembly variation had Read Article

How to Prevent Silkscreen Placement Errors in PCB Manufacturing If you remember the 1996 Olympics then you’ll know about Kerri Strug’s strong finish. She completed her second and final vault with an injured ankle, giving the U.S. team the gold medal, and proving the importance of persevering to the end. And yet we all know how tempting it is to relax and let our guard down at the end of a project, even in circuit board design. When we have the basics down, like a solder mask, screen print, heat press and a Read Article

3D Printing versus Real Time, Pre-Build Clearance Checking 3D printing has been revolutionizing the manufacturing industry. Once you have your completed design, just feed it into your printer and press a button, and it can be fabricated automatically. 3D printing is used for fast and easy prototyping of all sorts of complex and intricate items. So why not use it to fabricate your completed printed circuit board designs? Well, because when it comes to PCBs, there’s a better way. The Problem with 3D Read Article

6:29 PCB Design Process: The EDA Design Approach - OnTrack In this episode, Chris Carlson gives an overview of the process flow of PCB design. An expert in PCB design Watch Video

Top 5 Money Saving Techniques for PCB Design “It can be done fast, it can be done cheaply, or it can be done well. Pick any two.” A lot of engineers use this maxim to explain why their project is behind schedule or over budget. And there is some degree of truth to it. If you want a high quality design, it’s either going to take a lot of money, or a lot of time figuring out how to do it for less. However, if you know a few money saving techniques ahead of time, they can help you keep your Read Article

CS 1.4 has been released - Now easier than ever to migrate from Eagle™ Of particular note in this release, is the addition of Classes. Within the schematic, Net Classes can be generated using the new Net Class directive and Component Classes are automatically generated for each Schematic Sheet within the hierarchy. Within PCB a new Classes dialog is available on the Home tab in the Design Rules section, and this can be used to create Pad, Polygon, Component, Layer, and Net Classes. CircuitStudio® is the world’s Read Article

Need to Keep Your PCB Project Under Budget? Use a PCB Design Tool that Helps You Do That When you design a printed circuit board, you tend to design it for ideal conditions. You figure out how things should work together and engineer a solution that works perfectly on paper. Unfortunately, when you go to manufacture that PCB and apply it for its intended use, you very rarely come across ideal conditions. What works on paper doesn’t always match up with reality. As a result, you often have to do what you can to salvage the design and Read Article

Overview of Passive PCB Heat Dissipation Techniques Have you ever been so hot you thought you might melt like a popsicle? Summer down here in SoCal gets pretty toasty and makes me wish I had a few freeze pops. When I get home from work I love to blast the AC and pretend that I live in an igloo. However, the only thing worse than boiling in the heat is seeing all my money evaporate away in cooling bills. Other people take a different approach to cooling; they use geometric shapes or heat exchangers Read Article

A Comparison of Active Cooling Techniques for Electronic Equipment Cooling your electronics is pretty important. I know this because part of my laptop’s motherboard melted once. I bought a new top of the line computer back in 2010 to try out a new graphics intensive video game. It came with an amazing graphics card, but an undersized thermal management system to hang. I should have known there was a problem when the keyboard got too hot to touch when I started playing games. Soon afterward, my computer was on Read Article

How IBM’s 5 nm Transistors Will Enable Internet of Things Deep Learning and Other Technologies My great grandmother was born in a time when normal people still used horses and carriages to get around. By the end of her life, she had seen jet airplanes, computers, and spacecraft. Technology in the last century accelerated rapidly, and this century promises more of the same. Moore’s Law has been one measure of the pace of advancement. While many experts have predicted its doom, Moore’s Law stands today. The most recent proof of electronic Read Article

How to Choose the Right Reflow Oven for Your PCB Whether you’re an electrical engineer or an electronics hobbyist, solder reflow ovens enable fast and convenient printed board (PCB) assembly. If you have assembled dense PCBs with many small surface-mount components or used ball grid array (BGA) devices in your designs, you have undoubtedly come across solder PCB reflow ovens. While the ambitious hobbyist may choose to build a toaster oven “reflow oven”, many businesses can save time and Read Article

How to Setup and Interface with WS2812B LEDs Are you in the mood for a good laugh? Well, I have a story for you. I’m a design engineer with decades of experience, but a LED project recently almost brought me to my knees in despair. I used to think that LEDs were as simple as getting the light emitting diode connected to a limiting resistor and a power supply. Aren’t they? That’s exactly what went through my mind as I worked on an architecture model lighting project a couple of years ago. On Read Article

Intel Will Showcase Future Technology in Electronics and Communication at the Olympics Editorial credit: lazyllama / Shutterstock.com I love watching the Olympics. It’s exciting to see the best athletes from each country test their skills against one another. The Olympics are also a forum for host countries to showcase everything that they’re capable of. In the 2018 Olympics countries aren’t the only ones who will be showing off. Intel recently announced a partnership with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that will let Read Article

How to Perform In-House Pre-Compliance Testing for Radiated Emissions Sometimes you can feel like you’re putting out good vibes, but you’re really emitting something else. The same goes for wireless circuits. You go through design and immunity testing, then send your board off to an EMC lab only to find out your board is radiating the electronic equivalent of garlic breath. Performing in-house pre-compliance testing can help you avoid a costly rejection. You’ll have to spend some money on equipment, but it will Read Article

Conducted Emissions Test Equipment and Reduction Guidelines One of my classes in college was so difficult that the professor would give us the test questions a week in advance. Even knowing exactly what to study for the exam, lots of students still failed. Conducted emissions analysis for electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is similar. Devices need to be checked to see if they’re putting too much noise back into the grid through their power supply. Otherwise, the FCC will think you’re disrupting utility Read Article